My favorite Spanish phrase (learned on the radio during Cinco de Mayo) which I had been planning on taking to Buenos Aires with me, was He perdido mis calzones y necessito un hombre.

I got sick and didn’t get to go.

That is a legitimate word too, as is puta.

shit. There is a perfectly legit dictionary word for it: mierda. There is a translation for excrement, too: excremento.

Now in the Cuban dialect there is a slang word for turd: mojón. In polite Spanish, that means “milestone” (you know, those big stone turds by the side of the road that tell you how far it is to the next town).

I understand that the rest of Scandinavia is still a bit sore about that (Word has it you can’t sit a Norwegian and a swede at the same table or they’ll start fighting); and that Switzerland still won’t give up Nazi treasure from their banks. Still, they’ve done a lot better than most other nations.

The Spanish Government is corrupt, and full of thieving jackasses (In other words, not that different from the US), and can chupe mantequilla de mi culo.

(ER, please don’t translate that)

I use that phrase not to comment on the correctness of my views, but on how passionately I feel about them. It’s analogous to saying, “Whether or not Mom was an axe murderer, I still love her”. I have ho reason to believe she was a
Cuban Lizzie Borden, but that’s not really what that sentence is about anyway.

Assuming that some evidence will be presented to me in the future that right wing politics is benign, then I would be able to change my mind. But until then, no.
So the phrase “rightly or wrongly”, is purely rhetorical, a placeholder, like “therefore”, or “otherwise”.

The problem is, (and this has nothing to do with politics), I don’t expect evidence of this kind exists in any event, either way. I don’t believe it can exist. You can show me evidence of a benign right wing government or person, or a malicious left wing government or person, but there are also examples of the other kind which counterbalance them, either real or conceivable. And what is right or left? And how far before it qualifies?

Individual examples prove nothing. Patterns can be rigged by judicious definitions and careful selections. And extensions and extrapolations are sloppy thinking. Just because France has Socialized Medicine doesn’t mean it will someday have a Gulag. For that matter, if they got rid of their Socialized Medicine, that doesn’t guarantee that someday they won’t have a Gulag. in other words, Gulags and Socialized Medicine are not correlated in any way. They have nothing to do with one another. There are a lot of pleasant and democratic countries that have liberal/socialist governments (by your definition)and no doubt there are laissez faire third world hell holes. It don’t mean sheeeeeiiiit.

You see, I don’t believe you can judge the validity of a philosophy by pointing to specific examples or applications (especially when YOU are doing the pointing) because it is too easy to say things like “Oh, but that’s not REALLY Socialism”, or “But Nazism is ACTUALLY a form of Socialism”.

You can always point out to an exception or excuse or a special case or a reason why that logic doesn’t apply in THIS case, exactly like you did about Germany.
Its impossible to tell you anything because you ALWAYS have a “but that don’t count cuz..” hidden up your sleeve. And you don’t ever see it because you need to believe soooo badly.

Of course my remarks about Germany were not proof of anything, I was just poking fun at your attempting to use Germany as “empirical proof”, when it could just have easily been used to prove just the opposite. Of course, you were too passionate to pick up on that bit of humor, because you’re always so goddam sure of yourself and so self-righteous about your cause.

What if I say, “if you’re so anti-government, move to Haiti or Somalia, where they don’t have one”. Isn’t that just as ridiculous as saying that Russia was communist and had Socialized Medicine, so if we get Socialized medicine we will be communist too?

Tom, please don’t launch into a point by point refutation of this post. This is all just my opinion, I recognize that. But your rebuttals will be all opinion too, and you absolutely refuse to recognize that.

You seem to think you are the only
person on earth capable of critical thinking and objective thought, and that pisses me off a hell of a lot more than your politics does.